British novelist, Doris Lessing, on Thursday won this years’s Nobel Prize for Literature for her works that delved into human relations and inspired a generation of feminist writers.
The academy, which awards the coveted 10 million Swedish crown ( $ 1.54m) prize, called 87-year-old Lessing an ” epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to srutiny”.
Lessing, the oldest Nobel literature laureate since the prizes began in 1901, was the 34th woman Nobellist and the 11th female to take the literature award.
Doris doesn’t know yet, because she’s poped to the shop” said a spokeswoman for Lessing’s agent, Jonathan Clowes.
Clowes added in a statement,” we are absolutely delighted and it’s very well- deserved”. Jane Friedman, chief Executive of Lessing publisher Harper Collins, called the award a complete surprise.
She told Reuters, ”This is such wonderful news. this is absolutely extraordinary,” she told Reuters at the Frankfurt Book Fair.” She has been an icon for women for a lifetime”.
Nicholas Peatson, Lessing’s editor at Harper Collins division the Fourth Estate, called the news ” thrilling”. ”Those early books changed the face of literature- the description of the inner lives of women” he said.
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